


Unvarnished

by Shachaai



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-06
Updated: 2014-08-06
Packaged: 2018-02-12 03:00:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2093124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shachaai/pseuds/Shachaai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Girlfriends, painting nails, and inferiority complexes in the morning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unvarnished

**Author's Note:**

> Marianne = f!France, and Elaine = f!England. Crossposted (eventually) from my tumblr.

Marianne is the only person Elaine knows who can be half-asleep and still manage to paint the nails of both her hands like she just walked out of a French nail salon. Elaine walks in on her, half-asleep herself after waking not so long ago and fumbling blearily around her bed for five minutes before realising her girlfriend wasn’t where Elaine had left her when they’d fallen asleep tangled up together the night before, needing tea and thoroughly unprepared to find her kitchen table overtaken by Marianne’s legions of make-up… _implements,_ the air a little heavy with the chemical scent of acetate. Marianne herself is seated at one of the chairs, detailing the rather glossy shade of blue her nails _already_ seem to be with patterns of metallic gold, little care at all for the artful mess of her hair or the fact the stolen oriental-style dressing-gown she’d stolen to wear – since her clothes are either in her overnight bag or still scattered all over the floor of Elaine’s bedroom – is a little too small to contain the… _profundity_ of her breasts, which happen to be just a _little_ bit larger than her not-at-all-occasionally-envious-but-eternally-appreciative girlfriend’s.

…Oh, who is Elaine kidding. The times she doesn’t want to throttle Marianne she thinks she may truly love her, but that doesn’t stop the _pang_ she sometimes gets when she looks at Marianne – Marianne and her lovely face and hair and figure they might as well have modelled hourglasses after – that casually, carelessly, these days unintentionally, makes Elaine feel like an utter failure as a woman.

An utter failure to femininity, anyway.

“You’re up early,” Elaine says – croaks, really, still not quite awake -, raking back some of her hair where it falls in her face and padding forwards into the kitchen, cool tile against her bare toes. (It’s not hygienic, really, but she’s wearing more clothes her girlfriend is, it’s her house, and she wants tea.) “Usually I have to _pry_ you off of me so I can get out of bed.”

Marianne laughs, warm like the sunshine spilling into the kitchen through the window and sounding far too awake. “Did you miss me, ma chérie?”

Not particularly. It had been bewildering, yes; of the two of them, despite how virulently she sometimes detests mornings, Elaine nearly _always_ rises first. Even before they had decided to give this romantic relationship a go and things had been much more… _casual_ between them, it had always been Elaine who had left the bed first, sliding on shoes and discarded clothes as dawn had crept, whisper-soft, into the bedroom, quietly departing as Marianne slept on alone, the deep sleep of the sated, her gleaming hair spread out over the pillows.

So to wake alone _now,_ with her room still smelling of Marianne’s perfume –

“You didn’t seem to miss _me,_ ” Elaine grumbles, filling up her kettle at the tap with one hand and scrubbing the sleep from her eyes with the back of the other. The smell of acetate is getting right up her nose, and she wants to sneeze. “Since you’ve replaced me with _nail varnish._ ”

“ _Ah,_ don’t pout so.” Marianne smiles when Elaine turns around to face her again, the kettle on to boil, capping her gold varnish with only one hand finished. “ _You_ , my darling, are utterly irreplaceable – but you must admit, I can’t exactly _wear_ you.”

“You wear me _out,_ ” Elaine grumbles, but pads closer to her girlfriend when Marianne beckons her with the hand yet to receive gold detailing, sighing and bending down so the other woman can press an affectionate kiss to her cheek without smudging her bloody nails.

“ _Thoroughly_ ,” Marianne agrees, a perfect distraction, her voice dropping familiarly to match the descending path of her mouth to Elaine’s lips.

But Elaine pulls back. “No innuendo before tea,” she says, rakes back her stupid uncombed hair _again_ and wonders where she left all her hair-ties. She isn’t awake enough for this – _any_ of this – yet, not the word games or the sharp scent of acetate or the prod to her feminine ego.

Maybe she should’ve just stayed in bed.

“Spoilsport,” Marianne sighs.

“Finish painting your stupid nails,” Elaine tells her, and goes back to haunt the counter beside the slowly boiling kettle. “Since you’re up before noon, you must have plans?”

Not that _she_ had known about them. It’s Saturday. As far as Elaine had known Marianne hadn’t had any plans for the weekend, so Elaine had hoped she’d-

Had sort of _expected-_

Marianne tends to hang around when she’s not busy, and it’s. Not bad. Just because Elaine gets up early doesn’t mean she can’t go _back_ to bed and doze in the sunshine with her lazy girlfriend, because Marianne is soft and warm and pleasant when you don’t try to wake her up and just let her get _used_ to you curled around her, gentle hands and sleepy kisses that soothe a week’s worth of stress away.

But Marianne has _plans,_ so Elaine might just go through to the living-room, sit and watch dumb cartoons as she drinks her tea in her nightgown, slowly waking up. By herself.

“Actually,” Marianne says casually, and uncaps her gold nail varnish again to start doing the details on her second hand, careful dabs with brush and a toothpick, “I was planning on taking you out for a date.”

The kettle comes to a boil with loud bubbling, and clicks itself off.

Elaine blinks. Turns. “A date?”

“Oui, a date!” Marianne smiles down at her nails, blue glance flickering up under her lashes at Elaine for a moment to gauge her reaction, and. Well. “I want to take my cute little girlfriend out for lunch; do you think she can make it?”

Something warm and fluttery shifts inside of Elaine’s ribcage, and her lips don’t know whether to smile or grimace, wobbling.

Marianne looks up properly when she doesn’t say anything, bares the column of her throat with the gesture even as her expression turns concerned. God, Marianne really _is_ a gorgeous woman, gold gilding to match a heart veined with the same precious substance. “You don’t want to?”

Caught in the focus of Marianne’s gaze, Elaine colours, and turns back around so she can fetch her mug, and one of the ones she sets aside for Marianne. She can still feel Marianne’s eyes on her back, thoughtful on her nape rather than where they usually prefer to focus on her – short – hemline, but she can hide the burn beginning in her cheeks this way, concentrate on the kettle and the countertop and her tea.

Affect nonchalance as she pours water in her mug, teaspoon clinking as she stirs the teabag around, moves it over to the second mug and repeats. “Well, I _did_ have a full schedule of sleeping and telly-watching planned for today, but I’m sure I could squeeze you in somewhere.”

“I’m _flattered_ ,” Marianne drawls, and Elaine hides her smirk behind the sweep of her hair when she goes to the fridge to fetch milk, the sarcasm thick but fond around her.

Elaine carries the tea over to the table when she’d done, a hot mug in each hand, nudging aside bottles, toothpicks and tissues and earbuds smudged with nail varnish remover, blue and gold, with her knuckles so she can push Marianne’s tea towards her, since Marianne is far too busy doing the time-old action of flapping her hands about in the hopes her nail varnish will dry faster.

Little gold fleur-de-lis glimmer in the slants of sunlight still warming the kitchen on their background of blue, and Elaine smirks – again – into her mug, thoughtfully not telling her girlfriend she looks like a panicking chicken.

Unfortunately, Marianne sees.

“I’m painting _your_ nails before we go out,” she warns Elaine – and then squawks, more startled than affronted, when Elaine leans forward in her own seat to flick Marianne in the forehead. Marianne isn’t elegant in _everything,_ and the stupid moments are things Elaine locks fondly away in her heart.

“ _Your_ nails have to dry first,” she tells Marianne – and then gives up and laughs, setting down her tea when Marianne goes back to aggressively flapping her hands.


End file.
